The Corpse Wore Stilettos

by MJ O'Neill

  We went through all of the other items. The Bun Builder was a U-shaped thigh squeezer we could use to squeeze someone’s head. Vac storage bags, designed to shrink a whole wardrobe of sweaters down to the size of a tissue box, would hold a body if she was there. The Forearm Forklifts would help us move her. DC had also packed various other devices, from a gel massager to a dozen Insta Bulbs, and we’d figure out how to use them as we went.

  We parked the car on the next block over and snuck through the alley toward the back of the kink house. Nothing looked familiar. The streetlight overhanging the grassy alley wasn’t working, making it even more difficult to figure out where we were.

  “We need some light,” I said.

  DC rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a stuffed penguin. With the click of a switch, the penguin began to illuminate brightly from its belly button.

  “What happened to the Insta Bulbs?” I asked.

  “You don’t like my Flashlight Friend? I was afraid the Insta Bulb would be too hard to hold on to. Hang on. I have another idea.” Rummaging around some more, he pulled out two baton-like objects. He peeled off a plastic backing and stuck them to his costume. With another click, his forearm and chest both lit up. Between the costume and the lights, DC looked like Lantern Man. “Stick and Clicks. You can keep the penguin.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if we think someone is coming, we can’t forget to click you off.”

  We cut around a chain-link fence and crept up to the patio of a redbrick ranch. The house sat on a hill, causing the back of the house to be higher off the ground than the front had appeared. That made it difficult to look in windows to see if anyone was there. Still, it didn’t look like any lights were on inside.

  “You’re sure this is the house?” I asked.

  “I’m positive. I have an impeccable sense of direction.”

  I opened the screen door leading to the back door and tried the handle. Locked.

  “How do you think we should try to get in? The windows all look too high.”

  DC went into his bag and took out what I first thought were drumsticks. He connected the sticks to create a good-sized rod. A metal pincher perched at the top of the rod. “Extendo Sticks.”

  I didn’t think it had much chance of working, but DC went window to window, using the rod to push up on the window lips until he found an open one on the far side of the house.

  “It opened! I did it!”

  We fashioned a grappling hook out of the expandable pocket hose and a shake weight and tossed it through the opening. I gave it a tug. It felt solid, but I couldn’t believe something so light was really going to hold our weight.

  “It has a lifetime guarantee,” DC said.

  “That won’t do us much good if we’re in the hospital or, worse, jail because the thing broke.”

  We didn’t have any other options, though, if we wanted to get a look inside the house. DC went first. He looked like a comic book character, his cape flapping in the wind as he scaled the wall of the house up to the window.

  On my turn, I ripped my pantyhose on the brick but otherwise made it through the window uneventfully and fell on top of DC, who hadn’t gotten off the floor.

  “Why are you still on the floor? Do you hear someone?” I whispered.

  “Uh. You could say that.” He had clicked off his lights, so the room was dark.

  A low growl came from the doorway. My heart stopped. There was a reason I had a pet pig.

  “She didn’t say anything about a damn dog. How come she didn’t tell us?” he asked.

  “Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe it’s new.”

  “We need the chicken.”

  “It’s down in the bag still.” The bag had been too heavy for either of us to carry up. Instead, I’d loaded my pockets with as much as I could carry, and we planned for one of us to go out and get it as soon as we cleared the first floor.

  The growl grew louder.

  I pulled the things I had grabbed out of my pockets and held them up. “I’ve got the cucumber shooter with one round of ammo and the tummy tucker. One of us can use the stretchy belly wrap of the tummy tucker to muzzle it while the other one covers with the cucumber shooter.”

  “I’m not muzzling no Cujo. I’m a cat person,” DC said.

  “Fine.” I handed DC the cucumber Uzi, clicked on his lights, and opened the tummy tucker wide. Crouched close, we slowly crept toward the growl.

  Until we came face-to-face with the cutest Chihuahua ever.

  “I can’t believe you were afraid of that,” DC said.

  The Chihuahua yipped.

  “Shh. That’s a good boy,” DC said.

  It didn’t stop yipping.

  “We have to get it to be quiet,” I said. I looked around but didn’t see any toys. Finally, I threw the penguin into the room. The Chihuahua pounced after it, and I closed the door.

  “Our first casualty,” DC said.

  I aimed DC’s forearm around the space and into the next room, which looked like a leftover from a salon. Beauty stations complete with reclining salon chairs, hair-washing bowls, and dryer domes filled the room. But they were all dusty and looked unused. Not exactly what I had expected of a sex dungeon. Boxes covered the floor.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a therapist’s office,” I said, pulling out a wig.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of kink room for a weird makeover fetish,” DC said.

  We peeked around the corner and made sure the coast was clear. The rest of the house looked the same. We found more dusty beauty supplies. Through the darkness, I could just make out that chairs filled the main living room, which looked more like a waiting room.

  A desk had an appointment pad on it. The file drawers were locked.

  “Psst. This way.” DC had found a door that led to the basement. “It has to be down here.”

  As we descended, black-and-white photos of naked women in various states of bondage lined the stairwell.

  “I think we found it,” he said.

  The stairway opened up into a large main room complete with stripper pole and trapeze. A collection of paddles and whips had been arranged like an art installment above the fireplace. Several pairs of shackles hung from the ceiling above leather benches. Across the room were two doorways.

  “This is like that Hannibal Lecter basement,” DC said.

  “It wasn’t Lecter’s basement. It belonged to the serial killer.”

  “Because being in a serial killer’s basement is supposed to make me feel better.”

  “At least we haven’t found a body yet.”

  “Yet.”

  A door slammed above us. DC swung his cucumber shooter toward the stairs. “Someone’s here. We have to hide.”

  “In here.” I grabbed DC’s hand and pulled him through one of the doorways. It was a hallway that led to several rooms. Each door had a cute nameplate hanging from it. We passed the medical exam room, the shower room, and Daddy’s bedroom. I pulled DC into the tickle room.

  Inside, a purple crushed-velvet comforter covered an extra-large four-poster bed prominently displayed in the middle of the room. Shackles in the headboard protruded from the top of a bevy of luxurious pillows. An array of feather dusters lay on a bench at the foot of the bed. Several pairs of handcuffs covered a nearby nightstand.

  “Holy Fifty Shades of Grey. What the hell were we thinking coming here?”

  “You’re a superhero. Stay calm. Master Tahkaswami would advise you to mentally prepare for a potentially difficult encounter by visualizing what success looks like.”

  “Success looks a lot like me eating at the White Castle and never seeing this freaky place again.”

  “Shhh. Someone’s coming.”

  “How on earth did you get locked in that room? My poor brave baby.” The voice sounded slightly high-pitched and somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  The dog yipped.

  “Oh no. What if he remembers our scent?” DC asked.

 
; The voice said, “Everything seems fine. I only have a little work to do, and then I’ll be there.”

  “There’s more than one. We only have one weapon,” DC said.

  “We have the cuffs. I’ll stand by the doorway, and when they come in, you shoot them with cucumbers, and I’ll get them into cuffs.” It sounded like a better plan in my head.

  “I only hear one voice. They must be on the phone.”

  “I know you’ve had a long day. I promise to take good care of you when I get home,” the voice said. Then came the cackle.

  “Oh my gosh!” I said. “It’s the mayor’s wife.”

  “The mayor? Are you sure?” DC asked.

  “I’d know that cackle anywhere.”

  Before I could decide what to do, the door flew open. Mrs. Scott stood in the doorway in a latex suit complete with a hood that covered her face. The suit squeaked when she moved. She looked like Catwoman.

  And she was pointing a gun at us.

  Chapter 17

  “Cool outfit,” she said to DC. “Is that a cucumber shooter?”

  “You’d be amazed what damage a high-velocity vegetable can inflict,” he said.

  “Cucumbers can be lots of fun.” She winked at him, and his eyes got very big. “I suppose that puts us at a bit of an impasse, then, doesn’t it,” she said. “Although, I’d be willing to wager on my bullets over your cucumber.”

  “There are two of us. You probably couldn’t get us both,” I said.

  Her apple-red talons wiggled around the gun’s trigger. Her nails were so long she had trouble getting one through the opening. I was afraid she might accidentally shoot one of us.

  I needed to make a quick decision. My stomach tightened. “Mrs. Scott, we only want to talk. I promise you, I have no interest in harming you or revealing your secret dungeon.”

  “I should have known you would figure it out. Such a clever girl. How do I know I can trust you?”

  “Think about it. Outing you does nothing for me other than tie my family name to yet another scandal. Trust me. That is something my family is not in the market for.”

  She lowered the gun. “That makes sense, I suppose. All right. We can talk. But I’m keeping the gun. Richard knows where I am.”

  “He knows you run a sex dungeon?” DC asked.

  “Of course, honey. He’s a very bad boy.” She let out a loud cackle.

  We moved the conversation into the main room. “Hey, what’s with all the salon stuff around here? I thought your cover was a therapist’s office,” DC said, sitting down in a stylist’s chair in the corner.

  “Damn bureaucrats. You’d think being married to the mayor would have some perks, but I guess not. The county passed an ordinance last year forbidding in-home salons, so we had to switch our cover to providing psychotherapy.” Mrs. Scott sat on top of one of the cages. She peeled off her hood as if she were peeling a grape. Her gray hair shook free down her back. She crossed her legs and laid the gun in her lap.

  “It’s closer to the truth, anyway,” I said, smiling and taking a seat on a spanking bench.

  She laughed. “We did keep the name of the place the same, for branding and all.” Her expression turned more serious. “What gave me away?”

  “The short answer is your squeaky suit. We’ll have to work up to the longer answer,” I said.

  “I told Richard I needed to get a new one. At least now he’ll believe me. They’re a bit expensive, and it’s hard to write them off as a business expense.” She winked at DC.

  “I’m taken,” DC said.

  “Ooh, the more the merrier.” She blew him a kiss.

  I had never seen someone out-flame DC before. Under different circumstances, I’d have enjoyed the show.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t think of a tactful way to ask this,” I said.

  “It’s all right, dear. We’re all friends here. For now, anyway.”

  “Did Gillian Mathers call you Joy?”

  “Oh my, you have pieced together quite a lot, Katherine. The men in your life underestimate you. Present company excluded. Yes. Gillian knew me as Joy. She was helping me solve a sticky problem.”

  Sitting across from Mrs. Scott at lunch, I never would have guessed she was a professional dominatrix, let alone someone capable of murder. Even now, watching her try to flirt with DC, it seemed like a stretch.

  “I can’t tell you how awful I feel about what happened to her on account of me,” she said.

  “Then you didn’t kill her?” DC sounded gleeful at the revelation.

  “Heavens no, darling. Gillian was my friend by the end of things.”

  “She’s a reporter. Wouldn’t exposing the mayor’s wife as the city’s madam be a big scoop?”

  “It would have been, if I hadn’t had a bigger scoop for her.”

  “The murders.”

  “Yes, although by the time of her death, I think I had grown on her. I don’t think she would have given me away.”

  “Do you know who did kill her?” I asked.

  “Until a week ago, I was convinced the Russians had done it.”

  “Chentinko,” I said.

  “Yes, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Because of the dead girl?” DC asked.

  “Beauty and brains. Delicious.” Mrs. Scott’s face went serious, accentuating the wrinkles. Her near-constant, joyous persona had been better than any anti-aging cream on the market.

  For the first time since I’d met her, she looked like the older lady she was.

  “It’s important to me that you understand that I didn’t kill that girl either. I only disposed of the body.”

  “Maybe you should start from the beginning,” I said.

  “I’ve been running the dungeon for over fifteen years. I have a tacit agreement with all the organized crime families in the city that I’ll stay out of their business if they stay out of mine.”

  “But someone forgot to tell Chentinko the rules?” I asked.

  “He’s naughty and not in the good way. To get a leg up the family corporate ladder, he started leaning on me for part of my take. Of course, I refused and threatened to have him taken care of. I have a diverse clientele.” Her smile returned.

  “Instead of backing off, that’s when he started killing the girls?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh. As you can imagine, I panicked. So did my clients. My business plummeted. I thought about just folding, but it seemed so unfair. For one, I’d miss it too much. But all those girls. I couldn’t let him get away with it.”

  “And you can’t exactly go to the police,” I said.

  “No. So I hit back where it counts. My girls and I set a trap to steal the records for his business. He keeps them on a laptop.”

  “You took the laptop?” I asked.

  “We sure did. I told him if he didn’t back off, intimate details of Russian Mafia operations would begin to leak to people he surely didn’t want them leaked to and that I’d go out of my way to make sure everyone knew they had him to thank.”

  “Wicked,” DC said.

  “So how did Gillian Mathers get involved?” I asked.

  “I didn’t trust Chentinko any farther than I could throw him. I wanted him to pay for what had happened to my girls.”

  “You struck a deal with her. The laptop in exchange for her keeping your secret?” I rolled it around in my head, wondering if that laptop could be where Gillian had gotten the missile codes I found in Grand’s scrapbook. Maybe that was where Burns’s mysterious Covana could be found.

  “Like I said, I don’t think she’d have given me away, anyway, but I did entrust the laptop to her to help deal with Chentinko. When she ended up dead, I assumed Chentinko had figured it out and taken back what was his. The police never recovered the laptop. But then that girl who works for him broke in looking for it.”

  “The missing girl from the morgue? The one you dumped at the dumpster?” DC asked.

  Her hand shook. “Yes. I came home and found her lying dead on the lino
leum with a note pinned to her.”

  She walked over to a cabinet full of sex toys and rummaged around. She handed the note to me. I read it out loud.

  Dearest Madame,

  As your humblest servant, I leave you this gift. She said she was sent by that bad Russian man you are at war with and was looking for a laptop. I would never take such an action without your permission, but it was an accident. I surprised her, and we struggled for her gun. Her head hit the fireplace.

  We all looked toward the fireplace.

  “I swear I didn’t kill her!” Mrs. Scott said.

  I went back to the letter.

  I knew you would know best what to do, so I have left her here for you. It was an accident, but I did it for you. I hope you are pleased.

  Yours with devotion

  “We believe you. Don’t we, Kat?” DC asked while I contemplated the lack of a signature.

  Maybe DC was starting to warm up to her.

  “Yes. I think I do. But if you didn’t do it, you must know who did. It has to be a client.”

  “Not really. I didn’t have any scheduled appointments that night. So it could have been any of my customers. It’s not exactly something I can go around asking. Besides, I’m sure it was an accident like the note says.”

  “So to keep your cover safe, you disposed of the body?” I asked.

  “The hardest part was having to hit her in the face after she was dead. I thought if it looked like another one of my girls had been killed, no one would pay any attention. This is really Chentinko’s fault. He never should have sent that girl to do his bidding.”

  “So you think Chentinko stole the body from the morgue because he didn’t want her tied to him.”

  “Probably,” she said.

  “Do you know why he would try to make the police think I was involved or if he has someone working at the morgue?”

  “No. I was as surprised as you. Maybe he thought that given your father’s troubles, if they were focused on you and your family, they wouldn’t go looking anywhere else.”

  “Of course, the bigger question is, if you don’t have the laptop and Chentinko doesn’t have the laptop, where the hell is it?” DC asked.